Living Like You Mean It – Jodi Wellman

The Retirement Wisdom Podcast

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Last week before heading off on a family vacation in Colorado, I was reminded of the power of a deadline. Getting things done before vacation is one thing, but are there things you really want to do but are putting them off? Jodi Wellman, author of You Only Die Once: How To Make It To The End With No Regrets, discusses how to leverage the power of temporal scarcity, and offers practical advice on how to break out of autopilot to live more fully. Jodi Wellman challenges us to confront our mortality head-on and use it as motivation to live more purposefully. Her work combines insights from Positive Psychology and her personal experiences, with a refreshing take on how awareness of death can actually enhance our lives. You’ll want to try out Jodi’s Life Calculator and discover how to “live like we mean it.”

Jodi Wellman joins us from California.

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Bio

Jodi Wellman is a former corporate executive turned executive coach and the author of You Only Die Once: How To Make It To The End With No Regrets. She has a Master’s in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, where she is an instructor in the Master’s program and a trainer in the world-renowned Penn Resilience Program. She is a Professional Certified Coach with the ICF and a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach from CTI. She has coached and spoken with clients like American Express, Fidelity, pwc, Royal Bank of Canada, BMW, and more, and runs her own business, Four Thousand Mondays. She lives between Palm Springs and Chicago with her husband and cat, Andy.

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For More on Jodi Wellman

You Only Die Once: How To Make It To The End With No Regrets

Website

Life Calculator

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Wise Quotes

On The Value of Deadlines

“And it’s all about how when we are made aware, consciously, we focus on the ending of something that is temporary or rare, like a limited time only thing. Well, our perception of its value definitely increases. If we knew we would live forever, which sometimes is a fantasy. And to be honest, other than it sounding exhausting, if we knew we were going to live forever, we would never take action on anything because there’d be no real literal deadline. You’d just say, Yeah, I’ll go and take that college course maybe like in the next thousand years, because you could do it. But we’d never get anything really done. We unfortunately need the deadline and it can be a bummer, but it’s the activating force that can help us to get going on our dreams and our intentions.”

On the Life Calculator

“So my company, I called 4,000 Mondays, because we roughly get 4,000 weeks, with the math of working backwards. First of all, if you want to calculate how many Mondays you have lived so far, good for you. And let’s celebrate those years and Mondays. That’s amazing. But more importantly, what do you have left? So for example, I know I have 1,814 left if I live an average female life to 83. Men live till an average of 78, at least in the US to make this a localized calculation. And the math would be that you take either the 83 or the 78 or 80 if you don’t identify with other gender, and minus your current age, and then multiply by 52. And that number is designed to make you go Oh!”

On Identity & Purpose in Retirement

“Identity is a real thing. A lot of people will end up re-evaluating life in a new retirement or even, have been in retirement for a while. and say, it actually gives me such delight to know that my purpose is to just be a really good grandfather or I’m the best dog parent there is, or it could be something else. People feel often times like passion and purpose are these elusive things that we feel like we’re missing out on and we want more of – and usually it comes through experimenting. So if there’s something you’re kind of curious about or wondered about, maybe being a Big Brother, or wondered about getting involved to mentor some of the new startups in town? Because I worked in a business for 19 ,000 years and how do I apply to help them? Go give it a go, give it a try. Sometimes it doesn’t spark and that is expected and it’s okay to say, You know what, I gave it a go. I’m going to try the next thing, because not everything will take. But when you find something that gives you that little pitter-patter, that little feeling of, Oh, good, I feel like I in some way made a difference today. And in Psychology, it’s that stage of development where it’s like generativity versus stagnation. Generativity is really what most people are yearning for in a post- retirement phase, which is: let me still feel like I’m able to contribute.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.